TD Bank agreed to pay an historic $3 billion in penalties and pleaded guilty to criminal charges for violating federal laws against permitting money laundering, according to the Department of Justice.
"TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one," Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday.
The Canada-based bank pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and commit money laundering, Garland said.
It became the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to violating the act and the first U.S. bank to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, the AG said. It's also the largest penalty paid for violating the law.
As part of the deal, TD Bank will restructure its corporate compliance program and has agreed to a three-year monitorship and five years' probation.
"In addition to obtaining today's corporate felony pleas, the Justice Department has also prosecuted two dozen individuals for their involvement in money laundering schemes that moved over $670 million in illicit funds through TD Bank accounts," Garland said.
"So far, the Justice Department has charged two TD Bank employees for their involvement in one of these schemes," he added.
The Justice Department said TD Bank had "long-term, pervasive, and systematic deficiencies" in its anti-money laundering systems between January 2014 and October 2023, but did not take "appropriate action." During those years, it failed to monitor $18.3 trillion in customer activity.
"This allowed three money laundering networks to transfer over $670 million through TD Bank accounts. At least one of those schemes involved five TD Bank employees," Garland said.
In one of them that operated between January 2018 and February 2021, a money laundering network processed more than $470 million through the bank via large cash deposits to various accounts, the DOJ said.
Those behind the plot gave bank employees gift cards worth more than $57,000 to ensure they would continue to process the deposits.
The bank employees also did not identify those making the transactions in required reports even though the suspicious deposits were well over the $10,000 limit allowed.
